Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Who's united, and who's divided?

I keep hearing pundits on the major news networks talk about how the Democrats are "bitterly divided" this election season. Well, one thing is for certain; Democrats ARE divided over who they want to be the nominee. But are they really divided as a party? I don't think so. I haven't heard many Democrats making claims about not voting, or voting for the Repbulicans if their respective candidate looses the nomination. I live in a house that is divided; my wife is leaning towards supporting Hillary Clinton in the upcoming primary and I am leaning towards Barack Obama. We aren't really having any raging battles with each other, we pretty much agree what the issues of importance are in the upcoming election. She just happens to prefer Senator Clinton carrying the Democratic Party message, while I prefer Senator Obama.

The Democratic race is about who, not what. The GOP race, however, is definately much more divided. Though Senator McCain is the presumptive nominee at this point, there are many influential party members who are saying that they would never support him as the Republican candidate. This is mostly a fight over rigid ideology. Senator McCain is disliked by conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and James Dobbson because he does not draconianly adhere to Republican principals. I personally believe that the GOP primary voters have been wise to select McCain for that very reason; he appeals to moderates, independents, and some Democrats. The far right of the Republican Party, however, feels that McCain's major pieces of legislation reach too far to the middle.

There are not major Democratic supporters making drastic claims about Sens. Obama and Clinton. Democratic primary voters seem to be telling us that they like both the candidates, whereas the Republican are lamenting about the guy that they have voted for.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I am completely in the Obama camp, but I would be happy with either of them rather than McCain or Huckabee....those guys are freaking nuts!

In Iraq for 100 more years???
Change the Constitution to the "Word of God"....??????

ummmm, no!

Nathan Wissman said...

I think that our views are typical of most Dems, we like Obama but we like Sen. Clinton too.

McCain and the war baffles me. He is trying to out hawk everyone in the Republican field over a policy that most Americans no longer support. It's as if he is trying to make up with the GOP base for his moderate positions on a lot of social and fiscal issues by running to the far right on the war.

Huckabee seems like a nice guy and a decent human being, but his changing the Constitution to the word of God thing is troubling. First of all, it presumes that if there is in fact a God, that it is possible for one of us to understand what that God's message is. Second, there are many of us in this country who are either religious, yet believe in seperation of church and state, or who are atheist/agnostic who do not believe in the definite word of God.